Milton Friedman once said that, if you put the government in charge of the Sahara desert, there’ll eventually be a shortage of sand. No wonder that, after 14 years of socialist government, Venezuela — the country with the world’s largest oil reserves — is currently importing gasoline. This fact highlights Venezuela’s painful descent into chaos, as the economy crumbles and the nation’s social fabric unravels.

Venezuela is now witnessing its largest protests in a decade. The government of President Nicolas Maduro has cracked down on demonstrations with unprecedented force, using the National Guard and armed paramilitary gangs. At least 14 people have been killed, with hundreds detained — including Leopoldo López, one of the most emblematic leaders of the opposition — and over a dozen cases of torture reported.

Driving the unrest is a large segment of the population that is fed up with the country’s rapidly deteriorating economy. Despite receiving over $1 trillion in oil revenues since 1999, the government has run out of cash and now relies heavily on printing money to finance itself. The result is the highest inflation rate in the world: officially 56 per cent last year, although according to calculations by Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, the implied annual inflation rate is actually 330 per cent.